Street

Addiction is an illness that rocks families everyday.

For the majority of my life, it has rocked mine. I married and loved an addict. I just didn’t know that’s what he was until I was already drowning in the consequences. All his secrets and the omissions were everywhere and each discovery was heavy with shame.

Our daughter was unplanned by myself, but definitely planned by my Ex. He, as we were facing our end, made a decision to try and keep things a certain way.

Thick chapters in his whole life are filled with one desperate decision after another. Keeping small things alive and in his possession- his stash, his relationship, his job, his car, his home– through any means become life. There is no room for the meaningful things because you are always digging out from consequences and always trying to duck tape your life together. You were always trying to hold together the bare minimum so you looked together. Survival of this half life becomes all that matters and so he would promise things, steal things, lie about things, etc. It was constant skirting the problems that were piling up. Mainly upset friends and family and bills. There was no life. There was just existing minute to minute. Living one problem to the next.

It is exhausting. It was exhausting to be in. Crawling out of holes into light and then falling back in the the deep darkness again and again.

His plan for the thing that would keep me was the instead thing that made me leave. It called me away to something bigger than “in sickness,” and “for worse.” I had to break my vows to keep the ones that came with motherhood.

Motherhood called me to this new life. Albeit, over time. I gave him a year to choose her. And, after everything fell apart, I was able to piece a life together in the wreckage. An equally imperfect, but good life where things grow. Where there is life. Where, when we find ourselves in a hole, we help each other out without stepping on necks. No one is making desperate choices without thinking of who will be left behind or hurt.

This is the difference between home run on addiction and one not. The pace can be equally exhausting, but you aren’t constantly being chased by relationships you burned down, debts you piled up, and promises you broken. The duck tape is only taken out on occasion.

Today is a duck tape day. Because the addict, recovering once again, has broken a promise again.

He is working steps. I got a dictated voice-to-text apology a few days ago. This time I was on the checklist.

Then I got a request to work out time for him to see our daughter. I agreed.

Then I got, when I didn’t answer his apology, a text apologizing if he threw me for a loop. I explained I wasn’t thrown. I just don’t have anything to say about an apology he offered. To which he made things about him and how he needed to do that to move on and implied i was rude to not acknowledge his achievement.

Here’s the thing:

There is no achievement for being a decent human. That’s not award winning when you stop threatening people. You don’t get a gold star sticker when you stop telling someone all the ways they are awful to just leaving them alone.

The thing is: the person who you’ve been abusing, if they’ve done the work, already understands why you do the shit you do. Even if you didn’t. There was no newsflash here.

Today, those plans he firmed up yesterday, with her favorite restaurant and take her shopping, became things he can’t do. He’s sad because he fucked up and now is back to being chased by things he didn’t take care of. Circumstances that happened to him, instead of consequences of things he put into motion.

For all the talk about accountability…. here we are… again. My first born stuck living under the fucking shadow of his half life because he was so focused on getting through one problem he didn’t pay attention to the other consequences hanging overhead.

Shove your checklist.

When you’ve done the work, we will know. We will know because you won’t leave your ache here. We won’t drag around the weight of feeling foolish on days like today.

The consequences of your illness chase her. They make her start days off from a hole. For myself, I am forever chased by the consequence of choosing you once upon a time. No matter how much I fill in your hole– it still fucking sinks and I never can never make it stay level despite all the work I’ve done.

Fuck your checklist. Walk down another street. We are tired of this one.